Too much bad­ger­ing and neg­a­tive pub­lic­i­ty are be­ing blamed for San­dals Re­sorts In­ter­na­tion­al’s pull­out from the To­ba­go project by its Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer Geb­hard Rain­er.

For­mer head of the Joint Con­sul­ta­tive Coun­cil (JCC) Afra Ray­mond said he strong­ly be­lieves that neg­a­tive pub­lic­i­ty is not the re­al rea­son why San­dals Re­sorts pulled out of the To­ba­go San­dals project.

Petrotrin says that it has trans­ferred $50 mil­lion to com­mer­cial banks to ful­fill its com­mit­ment to pay all for­mer non-per­ma­nent work­ers out­stand­ing back­pay for the pe­ri­od 2011 to 2018.

The So­cial De­vel­op­ment Min­istry, which found ver­bal abuse of an in­mate at one geri­atric home, re­ferred the mat­ter to the po­lice, and al­so re­ferred three oth­er mat­ters at pri­vate res­i­dences to po­lice over 2017-2018.

Cli­co In­vest­ment Bank (CIB) had the pow­er to take le­gal ac­tion against its for­mer chair­man An­dre Mon­teil af­ter his $78 mil­lion loan was trans­ferred to CL Fi­nan­cial chair­man Lawrence Duprey with­out its knowl­edge.

Kei­tha Oliv­er has been pro­mot­ed to the po­si­tion of Se­nior Ac­count Ex­ec­u­tive at Pep­per Ad­vers­ing ef­fec­tive Jan­u­ary 1, 2019.

The South­ern Sales Group of Com­pa­nies (SSSL) re­cent­ly signed an agree­ment with Rosco Petroa­vance Lim­it­ed for the ex­clu­sive sup­ply of Mo­bil Lu­bri­cants for all sev­en of its work­shops through­out T&T. This agree­ment cov­ers the pro­vi­sion of ful­ly syn­thet­ic en­gine oils for the Au­di, Maz­da, Kia and Isuzu lines of new ve­hi­cles.

Dis­counts of up to 75 per cent were of­fered on toys, clothes, jew­el­ry, footwear, house­hold items and elec­tron­ics at var­i­ous stores at Gulf City Shop­ping Mall, C3 Shop­ping Cen­tre, as well as on High Street, San Fer­nan­do and High Street, Princes Town.

CAVE HILL, Bar­ba­dos – Off-spin­ner Bryan Charles claimed five wick­ets as CWI Pres­i­dent’s XI pushed tour­ing Eng­land on the open­ing day of the two-day tour match at 3W’s Oval, yes­ter­day.

Unit­ed States-based T&T ten­nis ace Kam­ron Mc In­tosh-Ross is set to make his of­fi­cial de­but for the red, white and black at the Ju­nior Davis Cup Tour­na­ment in El Sal­vador which serves off on Feb­ru­ary 4.

Dropped West In­dies women’s crick­eter Brit­ney Coop­er says she is pre­pared to make a strong come­back to the re­gion­al team. Coop­er spoke to Guardian Me­dia Sports yes­ter­day af­ter­noon as she trained by her­self at the Na­tion­al Crick­et Cen­tre in Cou­va.

In­cum­bent pres­i­dent of the T&T Crick­et Board (TTCB) Az­im Bas­sarath will be chal­lenge for the top ex­ec­u­tive po­si­tion to­day by for­mer West In­dies crick­eter Di­nanath Ram­nar­ine, when the board hosts its an­nu­al gen­er­al meet­ing (AGM) at 6 pm at their head­quar­ters in Bal­main, Cou­va.

While some may be get­ting ready for Car­ni­val with se­ri­ous di­ets or mak­ing New Year’s res­o­lu­tions de­clar­ing which ‘-free’ they are this year, true food­ies are busy try­ing to fig­ure out the next new ‘check-in wor­thy’ restau­rant and In­sta­gram­ma­ble recipe. For a suc­cess­ful and uber­ly de­li­cious 2019, here are five New Year res­o­lu­tions sug­ges­tions we think will make your year com­plete­ly flavour­ful.

Do we even need to say more? The spice that brings us our favourite mains: cur­ried crab and dumplings, cur­ried chick­en and roti with cur­ried every­thing. Of course, there’s more to the spice than just well, cur­ry! Cur­ried egg paste and roast­ed cau­li­flower with cur­ry are all de­li­cious op­tions for the spice. So need­less to say, it’s num­ber 1 on our list.

Gra­nola is one of those healthy snacks that looks easy enough to make, but is even eas­i­er to drop some se­ri­ous coin on at the gro­cery, mar­ket or gourmet shop. It can seem ‘su­per healthy' but have ex­ces­sive re­fined sug­ar hid­den with­in fan­cy pack­ag­ing. I en­joy mak­ing my gra­nola, as I con­trol the sweet­ness and throw in my favourite nuts, seeds and fruits. With the right base recipe, gra­nola can be tai­lored suit all per­son­al pref­er­ences.

I am a new­bie to the world of pro­tein pow­der and took some­time to find a shake recipe that I ac­tu­al­ly en­joyed drink­ing thor­ough­ly. The key to this milk­shake’s yum­mi­ness is tem­per­a­ture and con­sis­ten­cy! This recipe us­es frozen ba­nanas, giv­ing the pro­tein shake an ‘ice-cream in a milk­shake’ ef­fect. This shake not on­ly is de­li­cious but it is al­so ex­treme­ly fill­ing.

Every­one loves a good mom en­abler to tell us "it's okay, just do the best you can. Par­ent the way that feels best for you".

One day, many years ago, while in a ra­dio news­room re­flect­ing on the once vex­ing oblig­a­tion at an­oth­er fre­quen­cy to present the lat­est weath­er bul­letins sev­er­al times a day, I was terse­ly and im­pa­tient­ly ad­vised by a se­nior me­dia col­league that, in T&T, “it is ei­ther go­ing to rain or it is not. Why the fuss?”

On Jan­u­ary 24, the world will ob­serve the first UN In­ter­na­tion­al Day of Ed­u­ca­tion. The right to ed­u­ca­tion is en­shrined in a num­ber of doc­u­ments, par­tic­u­lar­ly in ar­ti­cle 26 of the Uni­ver­sal De­c­la­ra­tion of Hu­man Rights and in The Con­ven­tion on the Rights of the Child.

Last No­vem­ber Sagi­cor pub­lished a pho­to in the Guardian of a young girl, as an ad for their long-term in­vest­ment Ed­u­ca­tion Plan for fam­i­lies. Pre­sum­ably, the pic­ture rep­re­sent­ed, at least in the minds of the ad­ver­tis­ing com­pa­ny, a healthy child. It was not. It was a pho­to of an obese nine or ten-year-old. It is sim­ply stun­ning that no­body picked this up and the rea­son is that the over­weight child is now con­sid­ered the norm in T&T.